Cellphone pic Thursday.

Rainy day black and white picture.

Midweek update.

 This is the mid week update, let's get straight into it. On the weekend review I hinted on some Raspberry retro game action, well here it is. I tried Lakka first and it booted, the controller was setup and I just needed to move some ROMs over to it. I copied over a few ROMs and fired them up. They seem to work but I couldn't test the sound output and the same problem I run into with Retropie with the GBA BIOS pops up here too. Lakka won't even play a game it just black screens and goes back to the menu. More things I need to work on. Side note, I was going to try and configure Retropie 2.5, but as it turned out they released 2.6 so I wanted to try the latest and greatest. I turned off Lakka and popped in the Retropie 2.6 sd card. It started right up and configured my PS3 oem controller. Next was to FileZilla some ROMs over and drop off the BIOS to the PSX emulator. I found the BIOS folder and placed my PS1 and GBA BIOS.

 I copied over some ROMS and delted some other stuff I didn't want on the menu. I rebooted and I played some games. It all seemed to be working really good. Having pre configured controllers really helps someone like me. So the only problem I ever run into with all Raspberry Pi game playing OSs is the BIOS. PS1 can read the BIOS from the BIOS folder, Gpsp cannot. Yuo need to actually put the BIOS file into Gpsp's folder, not ROM folder. I started searching around on the net and found a supposed new location for said Gpsp folder. I started FileZilla back up and started hunting around. I found the pi/home/ and I thought I was close. I saw emulators and then Gpsp. Holy shit I think I found it. I put the BIOS in there and disconnected FileZilla. I rebooted the Raspberry Pi and selected GBA. I selected my ROM and... it worked! My game turned on. This is only the second time I have ever gotten Gpsp to work on Retropie. The first was 2.3 and now 2.6. After my amazement, I pushed F10 on my keyboard and got to the controller setup screen! I actually got to configure the controller and play my game! Even in 2.3, I was not able to configure my controller and Gpsp does not use the universal controller configuration. Holy shit, it worked, it really worked. Now what do I do? Ha ha, that is the story of my life, what's next to do? So I will copy over more of my ROMs and plug it into a tv instead of monitor and see how each emulator works, see how the game play is and see if the sound is good.

 I know you have been waiting with bated breath about the iTunes debacle. Okay so here's what happened, the day I was purchasing and downloading a new song, I was simultaneously downloading my digital copy of Dracula Untold. I started the song after I had started the movie. The movie stuttered while downloading and caused my song to stop downloading. I though nothing of it and refreshed the song download and was done with iTunes. I turned off the computer and went about my day. The next day, I came back and tried to create an mp3 version of that song. Nothing was happening. It popped up with unknown error -3. Google search after Google sear and nothing. I found an entry about uninstalling iTunes and re installing and I did that about three times. I tried the old 11.2 and the new 12. 64 bit and the same thing about the unknown error -3. When I tried installing iTunes 11.2, it said can't read libr. something file because it was written by a new version of iTunes. Are you kidding me!? Cut to Sunday, I was like this is some bullshit. I reinstalled 12. 64 bit for older graphic cards (Another thing that pisses me off. How are they writing two types of software. Write one and make it work for all, right?) and tried my file again, no go. I was so pissed off, I almost deleted iTunes completely, then an epiphany, this happened to me before, but what the hell did I do? I tried playing the music file and it would work, but would stop less than half way. Then I remembered I deleted the file, re downloaded it and created an mp3 version, voila it worked! So the stutter of the movie, created a dead spot in the song and of course it can't create an mp3 version of a non completed file! The unknown error is even explained by this. How can the error know that your download was interrupted and you have a corrupted file? All is okay in the land of iTunes and I for now. I guess I will file all of that under video games and computers.

 Movies I'm watching, so I started watching High School Of The Dead again. I have watched it numerous times and I still love it. I really want season 2 to come out now. I have been watching Die Hard 1. Yippe Ki Yi Yay Motherfucker! It's so interesting to see Alan Rickman in it as he was Professor Snape. Speaking af Alan Rickman, I'm also watching Galaxy Quest. I love that movie. I'm trying to finish The Transporter 1 with Jason Statham. I really, truly hope they come out with Transporter 4. I'm still working on Star Wars episode 1. People give episodes 1, 2 and 3 a lot of shit cause it's not like 4, 5 and 6, but you can't have a story without a beginning. And all the movies tell a story and show why things happen the way they do.

 Music, I really don't have any music especially after the iTunes debacle.

 Random internet pictures. 

I bought Big Hero 6 and I can't wait to re watch it.

Very soon these Baymax Funko Pops will be mine.

I never watched The Walking Dead, I want to, but I am going to buy some zombie Funko Pops.

 Well that's what I got for this midweek update, till next time.

Weekend review for 2/21 - 22/15.

 Friday night, we started looking for something to watch on Netflix. We settled on Hawking the Stephen Hawking documentary. To me, Stephen Hawking is an amazing genius. I wish I could even have a quarter of the brain power as him. One part of the movie stood out to me is when he said he only spent 3000 hours actually working in school. That equals one hour of school work a day and he graduated with honors. That's cool to me. I would definitely recommend it.

 Saturday, we had some errands to run and then a birthday party to go to for Melissa's cousins wife. That's a mouthful. We got to Golden Corral and we waited for more people to show up. We had some really good food and desserts. After the party, her cousin and his family came over to our house. They hadn't ever seen it since we moved in. After the tour we were all just talking and bullshitting. After they left I popped in Dracula Untold and cranked up the surround sound. Dracula Untold is an amazing movie. It had good acting, good story and I really, really hope they make a sequel to it. We headed upstairs and we popped in Unkown with Liam Neeson. I'm surprised it didn't have Julianne Moore in it, but it was an okay movie. It was an interesting story, but I felt like it could have been executed better.

 Sunday, we did our normal house stuff. We watched some shows and relaxed. Sunday night, I decided I was going to try out Lakka and Retropie on my Raspberry Pi. I had previously formatted and wrote the OS images and now I just needed to finish setting them up. I also have news for my iTunes debacle. Stay tuned to the Midweek update for the rest. I hope you had a good weekend, till next time.

Cellphone pic Thursday.

My first journey of setting up RetroePie on my Raspberry Pi.

Weekend review for 2/14 - 15/15 / Midweek update.

So we're going to time travel, then slide back to the present and hopefully we don't cause a paradox time shift. Ha ha. Friday night we decided to watch a romantic movie since Saturday was Valentine's Day. I popped in Hatchet III, we watched the gore fest and had a goodnight. The movie wasn't horrible, but definitely not on par with like Halloween or Friday The 13th.

 Saturday, we had a wedding to go to. We ran a couple errands and headed off to the wedding. After the wedding, we headed to Dick's Drive In and had some amazing dinner. After dinner we got a couple burgers and shakes to go. We went to Melissa's moms house to visit. After visiting, we headed home. When we got home, we popped in Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. We were kicking some ass. There was only a couple levels we didn't get the stamp. After that we headed upstairs and tried to find something to watch or stream. After an hour, we decided on some prostitute call girl documentary on Netflix. 

 Sunday we had our house chores to do. We got a knock on the door and the heavens opened and rays of sun shown down upon the Amazon package we ordered. After scarfing the rest of the amazing Dicks burgers, I opened the package up. Staring back at me was:

 This cute guy. My second Funko Pop. Of course I had to get the Hulk. He's like my hero. I have a list that it way to big for these Funko Pops of ones I want to get. Now I refuse to get everyone ever made, not happening, but the list of ones Melissa and I want is really long. Ha ha. I need to take a picture of it, but I put Hulk next to my Hulk movies on my DVD shelf and it was a perfect fit. So now I know where to put the new Funko Pops when I get them. Yes I am a geek computer nerd, but I don't care. Melissa also got me Dracula Untold. An amazing movie. I can't wait to re watch it on hi def in surround sound. Sunday night, we watched some shows and headed to bed. That was my weekend, I hope you had a good one. 

 Now sliding to the present, the weekend review commences now! Monday was so busy I didn't have time to do anything. Tuesday, was not as busy So I did some research and I found a new emulator for all the platforms I have. It's called Ppsspp, it's a Sony PSP emulator. I saw a YouTube video showing it running on an Ouya. I was like holy moly, I'm trying that shit tonight. Wednesday, I fired up the Ouya, loaded the Ppsspp APK and tried out some of my ROMs. The controls were actually pretty close to being configured. I changed R3 and L3 for start and select and I changed R2 and L2 for save states and load states. For the most part it actually worked pretty good. Obviously the PSP is pretty powerful so some games would be hardly playable and would stutter and have so may pop ins. Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire played okay. GTA Liberty City Stories stuttered really bad, it was basically unplayable. Oh well, that's okay, it's about the testing part of it too. I need to try the emulator on my pc and see how it does. I have been playing Minnish Cap again. I need to take some screen grabs. I haven't really played anything else.

 Movies I'm watching, I started watching High School Of The Dead again. This is still one of my favorite animes. I started watching Die Hard, The Transporter, Robin Hood, Bambi and Galaxy Quest. I know I'm forgetting at least two or so movies. Isn't it funny that I can remember the flow and plot lines of all those movies at once, but I can't remember the movies I'm watching. I was trying to get disc 2 of Land Of The Giants and now it's not available. I don't know what's up with that. Hopefully it comes back soon. There are so many movies I want to watch and so little time. I have games I need to play, games I need to finish, emulators to configure and my list of other things to do is endless. One thing at a time, one foot in front of the other.

 Music, I found a couple new to me songs and you might like them. First up is Tove Lo - Stay High. I'm not going to try and embed anymore sorry. Next is Alesso - Heroes (We Could Be) featuring Tove Lo. See what I did there? You know, I actually thought Heroes, was for Big Hero 6 and was disappointed when I found out it wasn't. If you haven't seen Big Hero 6, definitely check it out, better yet buy it, you won't be disappointed. Speaking of music, I am so pissed right now. In iTunes 12. whatever, the create mp3 version is not working and now i have go through a cluster fuck workaround to hopefully make it work again. I actually need mp3 conversion so I can have my music on all devices I want it on. AAC is nice, but it doesn't play nice (Pun intended) on all my devices. Hopefully I can figure it out, if not Apple and iTunes has lost a very damn loyal customer.

 Computer stuff, so I wrote RetroPie 2.5 to my sd card for my Raspberry Pi. I booted it and it self configured my PS3 controller! Sweet! The lights don't blink and save and load hot buttons work. I am having problems with the GBA BIOS of course. I need to work a little more on it and see if I can figure it out. I wish gpSP could read bios from the BIOS folder or at least be accessible in either Windows network, Filezilla or Putty. This should not be this hard. Anyways, so I got it going and started copying some ROMs over. I started gettign some weird error messages in Filezilla. It would say my sd card was full. Well long story short, I forgot to expand the rootfs! Ha ha. So I haven't touched RetroPie since then, but I need to. I read some more about Lakka and I will give it a third try. I will see what happens with that. 

 Randon internet pictures:

Not my picture, but I'm definitely doing this.

And you wonder why I'm watching Bambi and Robin Hood. Ha ha.

Drita is funny as hell.

 That's what I got for this weekend review / midweek update, till next time.

Cellphone pic Thursday.

My first Funk Pop!. Of course it's Batman. I'M BATMAN!

Midweek update.

 I didn't even have anything prepared for the midweek update. It's been a busy week and I have been really lazy when I can. I'll post a better one next week.

Look at the scratches! Okay let's spend a couple g's and then have a scratched exterior yay!

And the mom is pregnant with another kid! I hope these people rot in hell.

Weekend review for 2/7 - 8/15.

 Friday night we streamed some movies. Or should I say tried. I told you last time my Sony Blu-ray was having problems streaming Netflix and I thought I fixed it by streaming some local movies. Well I don't know what happened, it doesn't work again and I know it's not the modem or router. Oh well, that's what Ethernet cable is for.

 Saturday, we had some shopping for some birthdays to do.after that we relaxed during they day and watched some shows. Saturday night, we headed upstairs and we watched the rest of the How To Survive The End Of The World and the rest of Easter Island Mysteries Of A Lost World.

 Sunday, we had our normal house stuff to do. We watched some shows and that's about it. Nothing too exciting. I hope you had a good weekend, till next time.

End of the week update to the midweek update.

 That title is confusing, but also correct. On my midweek update, I told you I wanted to try RetroPie image 2.3 again. Well Wednesday night I did, it took some time, but I got my DS3 configured after not exaggerating 5 configs. I had three sets of buttons mapped out and I had to delete them. I programmed my hot buttons and they would not work. I went back to the controller config file and found my start and select were actually buttons 3 and 4 instead of 8 and 9. So I guess my Logitech PS3 controller is different than my PS3's oem DS3? Weird, whatever. So now it's time to make the Bios file for the GBA gpsp emulator work. After having 7 websites open, all saying different things, I placed the GBA Bios into the Bios folder that was only visible by FTP not Windows Network (In 2.4.2, Roms and BIOS are visible by Windows Network.) I disconnected FTP and tried SSH-ing into move the Bios file. Would not work at all. After scouring all my 7 open websites, I find that you can only move the Bios file in the command line of the Pi itself not SSH. Now after reading the said 7 websites, I figured out the command and I moved the Bios file!! Success! I sudo rebooted and launched GBA and... The game loaded, I could push the start button, but nothing else worked. I couldn't use the config file from the main system, you have to somehow launch gpsp from the command line and configure the controller there. I still have yet to figure out how to do that. So to recap, I configured the controller for all of Emulation Station, but not GBA or Genesis. I moved the bios file for GBA, I can play some games, but not others. I am still working at it. I haven't even tried PiMame, PiPlay, Lakka or this other one I found that I can't remember the name of and I still need to retry RetroPie 2.4.2.

 I guess this endeavor is more of a proof of concept then anything else. I have my old consoles, a tablet with emulators, my Ouya console that plays all my ROMs and computers that can run emulators. I am still having fun doing this, but Wednesday night kinda got to me. I have to do and redo the same thing multiple times because of whatever reason. All of these guides (Which I appreciate because they do and have helped me) say the same thing in multiple ways. I have a lot of trial and error. When you do the same commands a couple times, you start picking it up, but with me, it's not happening. I have configured controllers numerous times, but now every time I do, it pops up with a blank file that I have to X out of, then it pops up with a skeleton version of the configs. I have never seen this until Wednesday night. All of the different SSH, FTP, Samba and Windows network things throws me off. Each version of the OS, things are moved and rearranged. There's multiple posts on how to do things, but a lot of the times they don't match what's going on or they don't make sense or they are case sensitive and you don't figure that out until your 15th time pasting the command from a website over SSH. I know it sounds like I'm complaining and I am, but I'm not trashing what all these people have done to teach people like me how to do what they do. I just want simpler file structures, easier to understand commands and complete instructions on how to do it. Simply saying you have to run gpsp from the text line doesn't help when a person like me doesn't know how to run gpsp from the command line. End rant. All of the stuff I know has taken a long time, even years to accomplish. I know this is going to take time, effort and patience to accomplish. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. I just want to turn on whatever I'm working on and have it work. I want Melissa to be able to plug in the Pi, plug in the controller and play games. Till next time.

Cellphone pic Thursday.

My first Raspberry Pi computer.

Midweek update.

 Well I'm kinda feeling better than last Wednesday which is good. On the weekend review I talked about a couple different OS's that I tried on my Raspberry Pi. I haven't done much with them since then. I need to try PiPlay more and see if I can get the GBA Bios in the correct spot and see if I can get PS1 emulation working. Lakka seems interesting, but I can't get the Bios in the correct spots either. I wish there was a way to have the creators automatically point the emulators to a single Bios folder, without having to use the command line. I have been using my actual PS3 controller instead of my Logitech PS3 controller. Lakka and PiPlay seem to like the DS3 more than the Logitech. On some of the OS's, I can't even get the Logitech to respond to button presses. Just more stuff to add to the list of things to figure out for me. So Tuesday night, I tried the new RetroePi 2.4.2 image. It seems like it is better and a lot of the setup seems simpler, but I can't program the hot buttons. I still can't find where to place the GBA Bios either. There is a lot more emulators available now also. I saw three different SNES and  two different Genesis emulators. I have to see what one I like better. So I tried configuring the hot keys, I saved the config file and my keyboard stopped working. I think I'm going to retry 2.3 and see happens.

 Video games: so I have played The Grinch a little more and finished Whoville, now I'm on to the Whoforrest. The beehives and bug sprayers around the trees (?) are really annoying. I need to get back the Minnish Cap. Well technically I need to get back to my whole backlog of games. Ha ha. I think I need to make an actual list, then I can play a few here and there and try to make a dent in it. The bad thing is, I can't really remember all the games I need to play. Ha ha. 

 Movies I've been watching, I finished The Expendables. I finished episode five and six of The Land Of The Giants, I still love this show. Now I need disc two to show up from Netflix so I can binge watch it.

 I really don't have any music.

 Random internet pictures,

I don't like the gold, but the style and gun is cool.

This will be interesting. I have been waiting for Bates Motel to come back.

 Well that's what I got for now, till next time.

Weekend review for 1/31 - 2/1/15.

It Friday night, Melissa and I were still feeling like shit, we got some Papa Johns  pizza and watched a shows. We headed upstairs and wanted to watch some Netflix and eat some delicious brownies from Papa Johns. Well our Sony Blu-ray player started acting up again with the wifi and streaming. I ran downstairs and grabbed the Ethernet cable and draped it from the office to the bedroom. It worked and we were streaming.

 Saturday morning, we had to do all of our Sunday stuff that day cause Super Bowl was on Sunday. I decided to fire up Xbmc on my office computer and see if I can stream some movies from there to the Blu-ray player. Friday night I even reset the network section to factory. I re setup wifi and chose a movie and it was streaming like no ones business. What the hell!? I tried another movie and fast forwarded, it still worked. I decided to try an MKV file. It stuttered for a second and it was on and popping. I can't even get MKVs to play on my Raspberry Pi. I tried another movie, again it played. I said fuck it I'm trying Netflix. I started up the movies we have been having problems with and it streamed like it was hard wired. I stopped that stream and started another one.  Same thing, it streamed like a champ. I can't even make this stuff up. So let me get this straight, I reset the wifi and it doesn't help. I stream a movie from my computer and it fixes itself and streams Netflix? Okay, makes no sense, but I'll take it. So after we did our chores we sat down and had some breakfast. After breakfast, I wanted to burn a new Raspberry Pi OS I found called Lakka. Allegedly, it supposed to be super fast and super easy, with auto config for controllers. I burnt the image and booted up the Raspberry Pi. It seemed to very well. I couldn't load any ROMs, but it seemed like it was good. Still not feeling the best, I shut down the Raspberry Pi and we watched some shows. Saturday night, we headed back upstairs and streamed some Netflix. We have been watching a documentary called: How To Survive The End Of The World. I love shows like this and I love seeing what might happen. We have like two more episodes left to go.

 Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, we woke up and we got going on cooking some amazing food. We had all sorts of goodies. Chips, meat and cheese tray, lil smokies and bbq sauce, seven layer bean dip, jalapeno poppers, sausage and cheese in won ton wrappers and deviled eggs. We had so much food we could have fed like 20 more people. The game started at 3:30, but we started watching at 3. Well great good and good fun all come to end sometime. The Seahawks lost the game. After the game we hung out a little bit longer and we started to clean up. We watched a few shows and Melissa went to bed. I played around with the Raspberry Pi for a little bit. I put some ROMS on the Lakka OS and it seemed like it worked. MAME ROMs didn't work, GBA ROMS didn't work because I couldn't place the BIOS file. NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Boy Color all worked. There was no PS1 emulator that I could find. I tried UltraSlim 1.6 and it wouldn't even boot up. I tried RetroPie 2.4.2 and it did work, but there was no desktop. I tried Rasbmc, that worked really well. It actually played some of my MKV files. A couple of the MKVs made the Raspberry Pi freak a out and reboot, but I couldn't believe some worked. After messing around a little bit longer, I went to bed. I read that they released a new Raspberry Pi called Raspberry Pi 2 B. It has a quad core processor and 1 gig of ram compared to the Raspberry Pi B+ which has a single core 700 mhz processor and 515 mb of ram. I am very excited about it and I can't wait to get one. Well that was my weekend, I hope you had a good one, till next time.